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Put Down the Guns and Do Something Useful

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The tsunami of emails and death threats to Jim Karger and my comments on the likelihood of gun confiscation or a non-revolutionary event continues!

To close out the week, let’s look at a few of the comments we’ve received.

WE WILL FIGHT LIKE THE AFGHANIS!

Many of the responses point out that the US Army hasn’t exactly shown an expertise in controlling populations in occupied territories around the world. “Look, if they can’t win in Afghanistan,” they say, “how can they win here?”

We have to point out that the typical inhabitant of a country will consider invaders from another country to be just that: invaders. The US tax cows would likely respond with guerrilla violence if, say, China or Canada invaded.

But Americans love their military. They’re absolutely crazy about their armed forces. They nod smilingly when airlines let the military board first.

They stand and applaud at sporting events when some nameless Private walks onto the field for the singing of the National Abomination. To the average American, the US military can do no wrong.

So don’t expect Americans to act like Afghanis towards the US Army. In fact, don’t be surprised if more than a few Americans genuflect as they hand over their guns and do as they’re told.

This isn’t Vietnam. There will be a few guerrilla resistors. But if they think for a second they can “blend in” with the locals for protection, they have another thing coming. They will be ratted out. When their deaths are reported on the news, their countrymen will cheer at the nullification of another terrorist, the destruction of an enemy of the state.

Any resistance will be insignificant and isolated, and will be snuffed out fairly quickly. America wasn’t exactly stocked full of freedom-lovers in the first place. In the event of a full-blown police state, the depletion rate will exceed the replenishment rate.

THE MILITARY AND POLICE WILL DEFECT!

Another of the arguments is something like this: “But some of the soldiers and police will defect to the rebellion—especially once the government starts killing Americans.

That’s a good one. The cops are no longer Andy Griffith-type peacekeepers.

We aren’t in Mayberry anymore! They are law enforcers. They enforce the law, no matter how boneheaded or vile. They will kidnap you, confiscate your property, and even kill you. That is the US as it exists.

If you dare defy law enforcement, your life is forfeited. Law enforcement and juries both consider the lives of officers to be sacred in comparison to the lives of the masses. A cop’s word is worth more, too. And they’re all trained to lie accordingly.

The cops and soldiers are already part of a new Praetorian class. Why would they defect just because a few “sovereign” type nutcases get murdered for not complying with the holy government’s edicts?

They won’t. At this point police salaries and benefits are absurdly cozy (and again, most Americans think that no amount is too much for certain government workers like cops and teachers). Few cops earn less than $100,000 today. It would take an exceptionally principled person to turn that down because a few strangers get shot for resisting the authority they represent, and it’s never happened as far as we’ve seen. No cop has ever tackled another cop for executing a suspect that we’re aware of.

Besides, the ranks of the police (and military) aren’t exactly full of principled people. What kind of person collects a paycheck for enforcing unjust prohibition laws? They say they swore to uphold the constitution. But if they did they would have already killed all their officers, Congressman, Senators, and Barack Obombya.

Maybe some small percentage of the people who take up guns for the state do so with honest intentions to “help”. We’d like to suggest that they help by starting a business that provides useful services to the private sector, instead of waving guns around for the public sector.

Note that no one has defected from the Anaheim police force this week.

WE OUTNUMBER THE MILITARY AND POLICE!

Another argument sent to us is that civilian Americans outnumber their military and police personnel roughly 300 to 1. Even if every single American took up arms against the military and police (who are quickly merging into two arms of the same monster), they’d be hard pressed to beat drones and F-15s.

But the government doesn’t have to worry about hearing a peep from its 330 million docile tax cows. The government holds legitimacy in the ruminant brains of its livestock. The few very vocal “out of my cold, dead hands” warriors will choose submission as the better part of valor when the time comes and they realize they enjoy zero support from their countrymen. Their valiant deaths will be in vain. And they will know it. A few David Koresh types may hold out, but the vast majority beating their Internet chests will choose the path of no resistance should it come to that.

But here at TDV we are NOT calling these people cowards. Far from it. We are anarchists. We oppose the congealed violence that IS government. We always look for the peaceful, mutually beneficial option (you know, the kind that defines the market solution at the heart of capitalism).

Instead of taking bullets for defiance when the militarized police roll through your town, why not withdraw your support now?

THE NON-VIOLENT WAY TO DEFEAT THE US GOVERNMENT

"I know that withholding of payment of taxes is one of the quickest methods of overthrowing a government." — Mahatma Gandhi

Act bravely. And peacefully.

This war will not be won with violence.

Not paying income taxes to cripple the government would require the same amount of mass consent that we believe is very unlikely to materialize in the event of gun confiscation. But getting some critical mass of taxpayers to stop would actually be far easier than getting some critical number to resist the military-police hybrid, and you can win without firing a shot.

In the last one month we’ve identified approximately 500 contrarian websites and Internet radio shows (and growing). Would they each on average have 10,000 listeners? Alex Jones and George Noory would have millions while other shows and websites, while others like Adam Kokesh are rising dramatically. Others might only have a couple of thousand. We think therefore it’s reasonable to say, on average, they each have 10,000 listeners.

That’s 5,000,000 already awake, contrarian, generally pissed-off-but-feeling-helpless listeners/readers/viewers in America alone who know the private, for-profit central banks (aided by their corporate, banking, and state buddies) are and always have been solely responsible for all the chaos, violence and poverty in the world. Those 5,000,000 contrarians don’t have to be woken up and educated from scratch. They’re already there.

If they stopped paying taxes it would almost destroy the entire system. And, even if you absolutely insist on paying their extortion, you could at least reject the fiat Federal Reserve Notes every chance you get. Trade your excess dollars for gold and silver. That’s still perfectly legal. That, also, would quickly destroy the dollar and render the beast powerless as it wouldn’t have the money to even pay for its drones and helicopters. But that could easily change when the beast starts feeling too threatened.

If legality bothers you, however, you may want to check your moral foundations. Legal does not mean good. In fact, as anarchists, we can’t but notice that “legal” is a psychological swindle to get you to consent to doing what the state wants, granting it more power and wealth. The only “law” we see that is valid is the pretty obvious one: don’t aggress, i.e. don’t hit, kill, steal. Everything else is a con. Don’t fall for it. As Doug Casey stated, "Any laws other than those dealing with aggression are completely capricious and arbitrary.”

So many of those people with basements full of guns say they will defend their gun ownership with violence. Why not take the peaceful option of withdrawing financial support now by withholding their extortion payments? If you’re so willing to die in guerrilla warfare, why be so afraid of simply not filing taxes?

Like we pointed out above, there are probably millions of aware folks out there right now. We know that most of them won’t take a bullet to resist tyranny. We can only hope they would at least peacefully stop offering up half their income for the sake of liberty.

Perhaps the phrase should change, “they’ll have to come get their extortive taxes out of my cold dead hands.”